Play Ball In A Dystopian Hellscape

Saturday, July 8 — It was “Hello Kitty” day at the bayfront ballpark. The meaning of that seemed unclear to most attendees other than some very cute little kids with cat ears on. It was a clear blue sky day, most welcome after too much Summer fog and wind. Just a few clouds out over the water. Constant inane marketing and musical noise blasted from the loudspeakers; silence as scary, or at least not monetizeable. Semi-psychedelic cartoon kitty videos recurring on the big screen, recalling flashing images from late-night raver dance clubs; “I’m glad I’m not on acid” said one companion, an addiction doctor, while cracking open expensive but mandatory salty peanuts. Everybody around us was having a great time.

Great game too, lots of hitting and sharp fielding and a home team win. We sat in the shaded press box amidst empty seats, but the rest of the sunny ballpark was fairly full. The Giants beat the Rockies 5-3, after some tense late-game moments, but the home team’s reliever came in for the ninth and shut things down very efficiently, 1-2-3, like a machine. Big cheers; it looked like unlike usual practice nobody had left before the game’s ending, as it was just too nice a day and too good a game to hurry to be anywhere else.

Out front it was a bit of a crush to get onto the Muni trains, but it was a short wait in the nice sun and everyone was exceedingly polite about it. No pushing, just orderly boarding. Once on the crowded car, multiple riders of all ages and ethnicities looked up from their fascinating phones and kindly offered up their seats to my older companion, who was leaning on me as he needs a new knee. I idly wondered how many on board might have benefited in their lives from the mass movement for free or at least accessible health care my famed friend and mentor had ignited while just out of medical school in the 1960s (a couple of folks in the ballpark had recognized him, but unlike at a concert in Golden Gate Park, this time nobody volunteered “Hey doc, you treated me for VD in the 1970s, man!”). 

The N-Judah train largely emptied out downtown as most scattered for other routes home. “Bye y’all, see ya next time, go Giants!” a visibly pregnant young woman yelled upon disembarking. We stayed on, heading west under Market Street, rumbling under the barren financial district, then along under about a mile of relative misery by the Tenderloin and “mid-market” and Civic Center, the most troubled areas in the city, surfacing next to breezy sunny Duboce Park where the doggies scampered about, then into the tunnel through the granite hill my own home sits atop. On very quiet dawns in our place one can even hear the trains rumbling a couple hundred feet below. 

Emerging in Cole Valley, the re-branded slightly more genteel sector of the fabled infamous Haight-Ashbury, where people now sat outside in front of eateries and cafes enjoying the sun and “craft” beverages, we got off for the brief walk homeward. I was tempted to stay onboard for the fast and slightly downhill ride a couple miles out to Ocean Beach on such a fine afternoon, but duties called. Onetime neighborhood denizen William Saroyan once wrote in the 1940s or 1950s that his favorite ritual was walking all the way out to the beach via Golden Gate Park’s lushly green roads and paths, catching the sunset dipping into the Pacific, and riding the N Judah back up home in time for cocktail hour. It’s a practice I emulate whenever I can and when the fog has backed off. This early evening, tired, I skipped most of it.

Sunday morning, even though it was a day game with plenty of time before deadline, there’s not one word about it in the sadly anorexic Sunday Chronicle. But of course the struggling paper did feature numerous reports of numerous problems bedeviling our world-famous city; “same as it ever was,” as the saying goes, only worsened now post-pandemic and with fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the mainstay of alcohol ruining too many local lives. The city struggles to confront it, and does a lot, but our hospital emergency departments are in chronic overcrowded crisis and the health department expects we’ll set another sad record for overdose deaths this year. The silly recall of a district attorney and talk of ramped-up law enforcement have yet to show much if any impact. Smarter approaches take time. In fact my companion and I, with another colleague, had just published a medical journal article arguing for a somewhat more aggressive yet still compassionate approach to helping some of our worst-off homeless mentally ill and/or addicted neighbors get off the streets and into treatment instead of “dying with their rights on,” as was written in another medical journal exactly half a century ago. We’ll see how that goes, if it does at all. At least informed opinion, and some funding, seems to favor some better tactics.

About 90% of the city looks basically unchanged from years ago, the neighborhoods seemingly thriving, the parks and streets sparkling, if not befogged. The waterfront we strolled to the ballpark is beautiful. The downtown economic front does look challenging, along with the public health one; violent crime is still way down from when I showed up here 40 years back and I actually saw more bodies lying in the South of Market or Tenderloin streets back then than I do now, but thanks to the internet and intentionally divisive politicized rhetoric from too many corners, people are scared, and/or angry, and some think things are worse than ever in our “dystopian hellscape” where real estate values ironically remain among the highest on the planet. And alas, for too many, “perception is reality,” even if, or maybe especially if, they can’t offer any realistically workable improvements. It seems carping and complaining is a way of life for some people.

But the Giants play on, and win a lot too. The famed Willie Mays statue out front of the stadium remains some sort of beacon of hope, even when the fog slams back as it did on Sunday morning. One can dream.